| Pierre Loti (1850-1923) |
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The Last Days of Pekin
(1902):
"Toward midnight I am at last alone, in the depths of the Yamen, in my separate dwelling, the avenue leading to it guarded by motionless, crouching beasts. On my centre-table they have placed a luncheon of all the kinds of cakes known to China. Trees in fruit, in flower, and without leaves, decorate my small tables, -- dwarf trees, of course, grown in porcelain jars, and so tortured as to become unnatural. A little pear-tree has assumed the regular form of a lyre composed of white blossoms; a small peach-tree resembles a crown made of pink flowers. Everything in my room, except these fresh spring plants, is old, warped, worm-eaten, and at the holes in a ceiling that was once white appear the faces of innumerable rats, whose eyes follow me about the room. As soon as I put out my light and lie down in my great bed with carvings representing horrible ani[259]mals, I hear all these rats come down, move about among the fine porcelains, and gnaw at my cakes. Then from out the more and more profound stillness of my surroundings the night watchmen with muffled steps begin discreetly to use their castanets." 1 |
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1
Loti, Pierre
The Last Days of Pekin
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; 1902), Translated from the French Les Derniers
Jours de Pekin by Myrta Leonora Jones, pp.
258.
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